Ghana's president John Mahama says he stands a "very good" chance of winning the presidential poll, and Zim central bank says it is about to "drip-feed" another seven million US worth of bond notes into circulation.

Contact with the Air Algerie flight that went missing over Mali on Thursday with around 120 people on board was lost over the country's restive north, an official with the Mali prime minister's office told AFP.

"We know... that the plane that was carrying around a 100 people, including some 50 French, was lost from radar around Gao," the official said on condition of anonymity. - AFP

24 Jul 15:03

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Air Algerie flight has crashed, an Algerian aviation official says.

"I can confirm that it has crashed," the official said, declining to give details of where the plane was or what caused the accident. Reuters

An Algerian aviation official said the last contact Algerian authorities had with a missing Air Algerie aircraft carrying 116 people from Burkina Faso to Algiers was at 01:55 GMT when it was flying over Gao, Mali.

Aviation authorities in Burkina say they handed the flight to the control tower in Niamey, Niger, at 01:38. They said last contact with the flight was just after 04:30. Reuters

24 Jul 13:40

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There were likely many French passengers on the Air Algerie flight, France's transport minister says.

"There were likely French people on board, and if there were French people on board there were certainly many of them," Frederic Cuvillier told reporters. Reuters

24 Jul 13:36

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Whatever is the fate of the flight, the loss of contact is likely to add to jitters in the airline industry after a Malaysia Airlines plane was downed over Ukraine last week, a TransAsia Airways crashed off Taiwan during a thunderstorm on Wednesday and airlines cancelled flights into Tel Aviv due to the conflict in Gaza. Reuters

24 Jul 13:33

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Issa Saly Maiga, head of Mali's National Civil Aviation Agency, says that a search is under way for the missing flight."We do not know if the plane is Malian territory," he told Reuters.

"Aviation authorities are mobilised in all the countries concerned - Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Algeria and even Spain."

24 Jul 13:31

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Burkinabe authorities have set up a crisis unit in Ouagadougou airport to provide information to families of people on the flight.

A diplomat in the Malian capital Bamako said that the north of the country - which lies on the plane's likely flight path - was struck by a powerful sandstorm overnight. Reuters

In keeping with procedures, Air Algerie says it has launched its emergency plan - Irish Times

24 Jul 12:36

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Ougadougou is in a nearly straight line south of Algiers, passing over Mali where unrest continues in the north.However, a senior French official told it was unlikely that fighters in Mali had weaponry that could shoot down a plane. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak for attribution, said the fights have shoulder-fired weapons which could not hit an aircraft at cruising altitude.

24 Jul 12:30

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A company source told AFP that the missing aircraft was a DC-9 and that some 110 people of various nationalities are listed as being on board the flight.The source said contact with the flight was lost while it was still in Malian airspace approaching the border with Algeria."The plane was not far from the Algerian frontier when the crew was asked to make a detour because of poor visibility and to prevent the risk of collision with another aircraft on the Algiers-Bamako route," the source said."Contact was lost after the change of course."

Spanish private airline company Swiftair says it has lost contact with one of its airplane operated by Air Algerie with 110 passengers and six crew members on board.

The company says in a notice posted on its website that the aircraft took off from Burkina Faso at 01:17 local time and was supposed to land in Algiers at 0510 local time but never reached its destination - Reuters

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